Dreams from Chicago

The lecture hall had been terminally conquered by severly disturbed, numerous, and narcissistic vandals. All over every wall, every step, every table side, there were repulsive, creepy photographs of strange people.....alien life forms, as far as I was concerned. How about the floor? Could there be a safe escape route down there somewhere? I was about halfway down when I was suddenly greeted by a bright, black, shiny diamond in a cave of coal. She was beautiful—an adorable little nose and the most perfect pair of eyes, eyes that screamed sanity and reason. We greeted each other with open paws, and she raised a paw and cast aside the scary apparitions.

Crowded tables. What the hell were all those kids doing at a meeting like this? I bid a not unkind farewell to my mother's coworker, hopped in the old red car that died two years ago, and plopped onto my bed, which was resplendent in its big blue blanket and adjacent to the old bookshelf which featured books with curiously colored spines.....books that, oddly enough, I don't remember either buying or inheriting.

Wait a minute.....I thought I was in Chicago. What am I doing back in my bed already? Is Spring Break over? I haven't even seen Lily, gone to Margie's Candies, or gotten the new Pretty Things "Phillipe Debarge" CD. Okay, I know time flies, but not at the speed of Zeppelin. I'm bloody well in Chicago, and I'm going to get that CD.

I could feel myself slipping on something. It felt like my bed.........well, it felt like a bed. Maybe I was slipping through a wormhole back to my hometown. Any moment now, I should see the morning light shining through the little window with the brown curtains around it.

Ah, much better. Morning light......the sound of someone showering.....that's more like it. Come to think of it, it sounds and looks like both of the showers are running. I thought there were only two of us. Is someone downstairs? I hear noises that suggest it. Is something happening here? Am I missing something?

No. Nothing is happening. I know this because the morning light is once again shining through the little window with the brown curtains around it. Only this time, it is real. Or at least as close to real as anything else I could perceive. The sounds of water had subsided, and now the only sound that remained was a faint thing that sounded like a cross between a child learning to speak and......and......someone.......singing. You know who that is......